There is a lot of hype about the current coronavirus pandemic, much of it coming from the media. In times like these, you really want to focus on facts and rational advice about the virus, and precautions you can take.
To slow the virus down, you need to act as if you already have it …
Why fighting the coronavirus depends on you
Obviously, I’m not a doctor, so I won’t offer advice other than urging you to look to science for your information, not rumours and media outlets looking for more clicks.
What are COVID-19 and the coronavirus?
According to the World Health Organization:
COVID-19 is the infectious disease caused by the most recently discovered coronavirus. This new virus and disease were unknown before the outbreak began in Wuhan, China, in December 2019.
Q&A on coronaviruses (COVID-19)
Useful resources
I’ve come across a number of helpful, and informative resources about this current virus:
World Health Organisation
The WHO has a useful FAQ that’s worth reading: Q&A on coronaviruses (COVID-19).
Israeli Ministry of Health information page
Here in Israel the Ministry of Health has advice for Israelis that can also be helpful for non-Israelis: The Novel Coronavirus, Ministry of Health.
Israel has adopted a pretty aggressive approach to the coronavirus in order to limit the spread of the virus in Israel.
Ars Technica guide to the coronavirus
Ars Technica has also published a pretty comprehensive guide to the coronavirus, and sensible precautions to take: Don’t Panic: The comprehensive Ars Technica guide to the coronavirus | Ars Technica.
nCoV2019.live
This site contains data scraped from multiple sources.
There’s a really interesting story about the young man who created, and maintains this site here.
SciShow
The SciShow channel on YouTube has an interesting video about whether this is a pandemic, and what that term means:
World Health Organisation’s Twitter feed
Coronavirus: Fact vs Fiction
This is a podcast by CNN Chief Medical Correspondent, Dr Sanjay Gupta about facts and inaccuracies about the coronavirus:
Coronavirus Tech Handbook
This is an interesting crowdsourcing initiative:
a crowdsourced resource for technologists building things related to the coronavirus outbreak
COVID-19 Dashboards
This site has a collection of data dashboards about COVID-19 that are updated hourly. You can also subscribe to a feed from the site, although it doesn’t seem to load for me.
What the curves mean for COVID-19
This is a pretty good video that explains why it’s important to flatten that infection curve.
Vox’s COVID-19 series
Vox has a pretty good series of videos about aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic that are worth watching. Here’s their playlist:
Featured image by CDC
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What do you think?